If Fictionwise, BooksOnBoard, or any other independent seller legally provides a book in any particular drm format, does the drm company get a fee per copy of that book? I would assume so, due to the normal requirement to access some kind of a license server.

If so, then every copy of ANY book sold in a drm format such as Lit, or Mobi, or eReader would generate a fee for the company that provides the format, and there *should* be a benefit to that company for the existence of a program that removes the drm!

For example, the publisher of a book may want the book to remain under drm, but the drm-maker just wants the book sold (and therefor the fee generated.) Any factor that helps any one format sell better than another format should, in theory, be of interest to that format manufacturer, and the existence of a drm removal tool is one such factor.

I'm asking this question because of the perceived difference in behavior between Mobipocket and Microsoft. I hear lots of references to the "Evil Empire", but ConvertLit was, and remains, easily available. In contrast, Mobipocket has demanded the removal of at least one tool for drm removal, and appears to have (mostly) forced the removal of another. (I understand the first case was because of the use of copywrited code from the java app, but still....)

If you were trying to provide a service (such as drm), wouldn't you want to remove any percieved obstacles to the use of your service?

Yes, a similar question could be asked about methods of using a particular format under any operating system (Mobi has reader versions that will run under linux and windows, but Microsoft doesn't have a reader version that will work under linux, and therefore doesn't worry about supporting downloads from linux.)